Win XP says No Hard Drive

[power219]

I have just finished building my first PC. First, the book I downloaded from PC Mech, and the info I've found here have been very helpful.

The PC is now up and running. I can get into the BIOS setup. My hard drive, a WD Caviar SE 16, SATA-300 (500GB/7200/16MB) shows up on the BIOS screen. I have only one hard drive.

I can begin the booting process with Win XP Pro. It begins by saying it is installing various files. Then, when it gets to installing Win XP it says "no hard drive". I don't understand why the motherboard sees the hard drive, but windows will not. Any help would be appreciated.

Additional info if it helps:

Motherboard: Intel 975XBX2KR Intel Socket 775 ATX Motherboard / Viiv Ready / Audio / PCI Express / Gigabit LAN / S/PDIF / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAID

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz / 4MB Cache / 1066MHz FSB / Conroe / Dual-Core / Socket 775

Memory: Corsair Dual Channel TWINX 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz E.P.P. Memory (2 x 1024)

Graphics: EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS Superclocked / 640MB GDDR3 / SLI Ready / PCI Express / Dual DVI / HDTV / Video Card

I have confirmed at the WD website that the default position for jumpers on the HD is no jumper (in fact, no jumper came with it).

Do I need to somehow format the HD before I can install windows xp? I have no idea how to do that.

Thanks

[Cricket]

Make sure you have the SATA hard drive connected to the proper SATA port on the motherboard. Check the motherboard manual for more info.

Cricket

[power219]

Originally Posted by Cricket Make sure you have the SATA hard drive connected to the proper SATA port on the motherboard. Check the motherboard manual for more info. Cricket

Thanks for the response. I was hoping to get some more...

I tried moving it to various SATA ports on the motherboard, to no avail. The Motherboard manual does not specify that any particular SATA port must be used for the hard drive.

Additional possible issue: I am wondering if perhaps my floppy drive is not working. I don't know how to test it, but the LED light on the front of it is not on when the computer is powered up. If the floppy were not working, could that cause this? I know I did drop the floppy when I was getting ready to put it in and possibly could have damaged it, though it didn't seem like it at the time.

[wjperry]

Is there any reason you are trying to use the floppy during the install? I believe the MB is native SATA and shouldn't require any drivers. Are you attempting to install RAID dirvers?

[TwoRails]

Duplicate post... also see:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=184716